The Link!

http://debatinghistory.wordpress.com/

I also just posted a new topic on the 1948 South African Apartheid!

and again...

I have also finished a complete overhaul of the Wordpress website, and is more user friendly AND more visually appealing.

As for attendance in my website, I have achieved a spike of about 35 people on one of my higher days, and a low of 0. I have a current total of 227 views which I think is incredible.

If I have 227 people reading what I think and feel, this could be a tool used to propel me into a realm of historic stardom. This is an alternate route of being published, like it or not!

For a historian to be published it usually take a few self accomplishments to ignite it:

1) PhD from a respected History accomplished University. (Brown, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Michigan, Washington State University, Kansas, Texas, etc...)

2) Be employed by a larger University where you can be seen and heard.

3) Have published works already being used. (textbooks, pamphlets, historical theories, etc...)

For someone like me (24 years old, and a STUDENT at a undergraduate level) to be published means this could also elevate me to obtaining acceptance into a good graduate school. One can only hope.

Wordpress

So I have pretty much completed my website. It was a lot more difficult than I would have ever anticipated, but the audience I have received seems to be worth the headache. I still have a couple gaps that I need to iron out within the week that include shuffling around the tabs. I wanted to post video, or audio interviews that I have collected while researching numerous historical events but was saddened to hear that this would be almost impossible. Since the research was done through much of Ferris and its resources, I would need to obtain permission from the University, AND permission through each person interviewed. Posting something like this on a website is a very touchy thing for most veterans. Most are not proud of some of the things they have done, and many have told very few people.

One person that I had interviewed broke down in tears, and I had to stop the recording. It was related to what we would consider "war time heroics", but what he would consider a duty. It always amazes me when seeing and hearing veterans speak about their peers. The comrodary built in the military may not surpass anything else. As always, "hat's off to them".

Word Press Issues

Is anyone else experiencing some serious issues with Microsoft Press? Because I am!

Website to come!!!

For my English 417 project I intend on creating a Website that caters to both the class, as well as my major (History). Much of the idea actually came to me when posting my first blog, and wanting to talk about history to somebody, anybody, that would listen.

Its going to be basic, with the emphasis on a topic board including a new subject on a bi-weekly basis. Users will be able to sign in, so they can be recognized. I intend on gathering a large group of people including undergraduate students at Ferris State University as well as faculty members and some graduate students I know. Each topic will be able to be discussed in depth, and I'd like to have something like a "drop-box" of topic ideas for the following weeks discussion. Everything is still in the planning stages right now. I hope to have it running in no more than another week or two.

-Luke!

How it could be...

I do not come from a typical writing or journalist background; I am not interested much in some of the necessary components required for many other writing students, but what I do enjoy is research. Researching a topic or an event in history, allows me a decent amount of freedom when writing about the said topic, as well as providing me with a knowledge about something that I may have previously not known much about. It is learning along with loving.

Creating this blog may allow me to explore how other people feel about researching, rather than rigid topic specifications without much room for the writer (student) to fully explore. By writing on a blog sight, it allows readers from all over the world to read what I have to say. Fifty years ago this would be unheard of with the aid of computers in today’s society. 100 years ago we were struggling to find a means of communication through audio. And only 150 years ago, what students are doing right now with this blog would have been the extreme fairytale, with unheard of imagination. Technology has been the past, and it will be the future. What should we expect in another fifty years?

-Luke